A Rude Awakening
by roisaber
Summary: Most of Midgar's citizens assume that the life of a Turk is full of flash cars and VIP treatment, but the truth is, things can get pretty rough-and-tumble for the Turks when they're out on a mission.


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In spite of the soundproofing, the helicopter's cabin was so loud that Elena could barely hear herself think. For the nth time since being assigned to the Turks she once again tried to drag the taciturn Rude out of his shell.

"I grew up in Junon," Elena announced to him, a little too loudly. "Where are you from, Rude?"

Rude just stared at her in response. It drove her crazy – you could never see where the man was looking; his eyes were hidden behind thick, almost entirely opaque sunglasses. It made Elena feel self-conscious. Was he looking her in the eyes? Was he staring at her tits? Just what went on behind Rude's quiet exterior?

"Hey, lady," Reno answered for him, immediately making Elena recoil. "Why don't you climb off our man Rude's nuts already wouldya?"

Elena seethed. She hated Reno with a fiery and righteous passion. First, he hit on her incessantly and with all the shame of a tomcat in heat. Second, he had absolutely no respect for his position in the Turks whatsoever. He was an unshaven, slovenly mess, and his shirt was untucked and half-open under his suit jacket. It drove Elena to distraction, and the fact that Rude let it slide without remark just exacerbated her irritation. Reno grinned at her luridly.

"'sides, don't you know Rude is meditating?" Reno asked. "Picked up some weird kung-fu religion during the Wutai War. He's not allowed to speak more than fifty words a day, or he's violating the precepts of his order or some shit."

Elena's eyes widened in surprise. She'd heard that there were weird religions in the East, but she'd never heard of any order so strict about its adherent's behavior.

"Really?" she asked in amazement.

Reno started laughing so hard he choked on his own spit.

"No not fucking really, mother of Gaia," he rasped. "You really are fucking gullible you know that?"

Elena had to lean over in her seat and take deep, long breaths to keep from passing out from her fury. When she looked up, Reno was taking a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket.

"You can't smoke cigarettes in here," Elena hissed, pointing to a no-smoking sign emblazoned over the cabin door.

"Good thing this isn't a cigarette, then," Reno answered languidly.

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"Sweetie, this is a joint."

Reno sparked an old-fashioned lighter until he could get the end of the tube to ignite. Immediately, the cabin was filled with the sticky-sweet odor of an herb that definitely wasn't tobacco.

"A joint? You're smoking a _marijuana cigarette_?" Elena demanded, aghast. "Don't you know those are banned by the Shinra Ministry of Health! Are you stupid?! Ugh, now the whole cabin reeks."

Reno just laughed. "Yeah? And who's going to arrest the Turks?"

"But…! What if we run into Cloud and his party, and you're too marijuanaed up to concentrate on spell-casting?" Elena demanded.

Reno took a big drag off the joint and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling.

"Does Cloud have a helicopter? Then I think we're fucking fine, Princess."

"Rude, do something!"

Reno waved the joint. "Hey Rude, want a hit off this baby?"

Elena watched, aghast, as Rude puffed the joint down by half in one deep inhalation. Then Rude started coughing uncontrollably to Reno's sadistic delight.

"Quick, take another hit, man," Reno urged while the tears ran down Rude's face.

Rude sputtered, "Damn man this is some sticky."

"You… you… you…" Elena reached fruitlessly for an adequate noun. "You _men_!"

Reno laughed, and the pair passed the joint between them until it was nothing but a roach, which Reno stubbed out on a near-by tray table. Elena stared sourly out the window, determined not to speak another word to either of them until they were at their destination. Her sulk was short lived, however. A few minutes later, the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom, and all three Turks strained their ears to understand the static-clouded sound over the roar of the rotors.

"Bad news from Gold Saucer," the pilot advised. "There's a pretty bad sandstorm ahead over the Corel Desert. There's no way the whirlybird can push through that; I'm putting down in a small Shinra mining town called Borrego. Weather conditions should clear up tomorrow."

"Damn! Another 12 hours lost," Elena muttered.

"Hey, cheer up, Sugartits," Reno suggested, to her abiding horror. "You-know-who is keeping an eye on them; they won't get away from us."

"If you ever call me that again I will _kill you_, Reno."

"Promises, promises."

Elena hated Reno so much her skin itched.

The chopper started losing altitude and soon put down outside a small village that look like it'd been hit by a war. Dilapidated shacks and abandoned buildings made up half the town's infrastructure, and the central road was pitted as if by artillery. The great ore refining plant was long since shut-down and rusted through and through. The town's last remaining industries were advertised in bright neon signage that clashed against the shimmering desert sands – GAMBLING HALL and LIVE NUDE GIRLS featured prominently.

"What a shithole," Reno observed entirely too loudly.

A local overheard, spit on the ground, and retreated back into his run-down one storey home.

"Let's get a room," Rude said with his characteristic slowness.

"A room" turned out to be available at only one place in the musty town – a smallish inn that looked bad on the outside and even worse within. Everything that wasn't stained was pockmocked with cigarette burns or yellowed with tar. Elena wrinkled her nose. She didn't think of herself as being hugely sensitive, and she'd grown up in one of the lower-class sectors of Junon, but this place was in a sorry state that even the poorest of her neighbors ever would have tolerated. The innkeep appeared to be 1200 years old and moved like an animatronic sloth.

"Sign here, please," the owner slowly croaked, pointing to a guest register that must have been left over from the Cetra era.

"You take ShinraPay, right?" Elena asked nervously.

A glassy eye wandered from the counter to rest somewhere in the general vicinity of Elena's person. She wondered if the man would legally qualify as blind.

"Shinra… pay? Ain't no Shinra here. Ain't been any Shinra here since the mine closed down, back in '376. Why when I was a young'in, this town was the-"

"Holy shit," Reno muttered under his breath.

Sometimes Elena assumed Rude was just stupid, and kept his mouth shut to keep anybody from discovering that fact. But every so often, he'd cut in with a remark so perfectly adroit that it couldn't be mere coincidence.

Rude said, "Excuse me, Mister, but you forgot to give us our room key."

The owner's eyes went vacant for a few moments. "But, your payment…?"

"We just paid you, remember?"

The innkeep looked agitated, but it obviously wasn't his first encounter with elderly senility. "Of course, of course. My apologies. Room 23, second floor."

He slid them a key connected to a taxidermy squirrel, and the trio of Turks gratefully left the lobby.

"Shouldn't we pay him, or leave him a little something?" Elena demanded as soon as they got into their dusty, musty bedroom.

The room was boilingly hot as well as filthy, and Rude went to the ancient thermostat and fiddled with the controls. Instead of croaking to life, the building's central air conditioner just coughed twice and emitted a cloud of smoke and dust.

"You're such a goody-two-shoes," Reno replied. "But here. You want to pay him back?" He tossed her a small ice materia, powerful enough to provide at least a small amount of cooler air to the entire building. "Go fix the a/c."

Muttering to herself the entire time, Elena climbed onto the building's roof and replaced the broken materia in the HVAC unit with the fresh one Reno had given her.

When she returned to the room, the two male Turks were already making a nuisance of themselves.

"Hey Rude, like half this local directory is for 'Escort Services.' 'That mean what I think it means?"

"If what you think it means is whores."

"Whaddaya think?" Reno cast his eye directly onto Elena as she walked into the room. "That bitch Elena is more frigid than a Master Ice materia. I don't think she's been laid _ever_."

Elena roared, "Now see here, Reno whatever-your-last-name-is! Of all the most loutish, unprofessional, misogynistic –"

Reno just ignored her outburst and grabbed the telephone off its receiver. "Yeah, Mr. Pizza right? I want one with pepperoni and sausage; one with pepperoni, sausage, and anchovies; and one with pepperoni, sausage, anchovies, and bell peppers. Got it? Good."

"You know I'm a vegetarian," Elena hissed. "You are _such_ an ass. I'm leaving!"

Reno just laughed at her as she stalked furiously out of the hotel room.

A glance at the main – and only – boulevard showed that she didn't have much in the way of options. Since neither gambling nor LIVE NUDE GIRLS appealed to her mood, she instead headed to the town's only saloon, charmingly named the Bucket of Blood. Though the sun was only now just starting to set, it was obvious that most of the clientele were already drunk. Elena winced and wrinkled her nose as the fumes of pre-owned alcohol mingled with cigar smoke, sweat, and something that smelled disconcertingly like vomit. Quite a few of the patrons were surprised to see a pretty blonde in a sharp suit enter their establishment, and a man playing billiards on his own dropped his cue in amazement and Elena strode up to the bar.

A gigantic man with arms as thick as barbells was cleaning glasses behind the counter. He was so hairy that Elena found herself wondering if one of the man's parents had in fact been a bear.

Heedless of the stares of other patrons, she worked up the courage to ask for a beer menu. The man behind the counter laughed in an unexpectedly high octave, and Elena suddenly realized that the barkeep was actually a woman.

"Beer _menu_? Lady, we got lager. Want a lager?"

"Uh… yes, please."

The woman slid Elena a dirty glass full of hazy beer, and Elena realized with a sudden surge of fear that ShinraPay had approximately a zero percent chance at being accepted in the Bucket of Blood. She hurriedly pat herself down, and realized she didn't have a single cash gold on her person.

"Um, oh no… I… uh…" Elena stammered, patting herself up and down for effect.

The bartender glowered and Elena tried to suppress a rising feeling of panic.

"I'll pick up the lady's tab," a male voice called from her right side.

"Thank you," she breathed out in relief before turning to see the person who bailed her out.

Well, he was certainly no bishonen, there was no doubt of that. He was in late middle age, and his nose was so crooked that it must have been broken at least a half dozen times. He moved slowly, but without the languid ease of someone like Reno – instead, it looked like a lifetime of pain clouded every one of his joints. He slid a few gold over to the bartender who picked it up off the sticky counter, mollified.

"'name's Derrick. Want to get a table?"

Elena wasn't sure if she was being hit on or not, but she felt that giving him a few minutes of her time was the least she could do for bailing her out. "Sure."

Derrick led her into a darkened corner, where the stares of the patrons weighed on her shoulders a little less heavily. Elena took a few sips of her beer.

"What happened to this place?" she finally asked, looking for anything to fill the silence.

"Har, you don't pull any punches, do you?" Derrick asked with a bemused snort. "Well, if you really want to hear our story, Borrego used to be a mining town. Shinra paid and we dug. Silver mostly, but also gold, nickel, and occasionally rare earths. They didn't pay great but they paid enough to live on. We even had a bright red schoolhouse with a teacher from the City. Then guess what happened."

Elena could guess. It was a common enough story, if a sad one.

"Then the ore ran out."

"That's right," Derrick said, taking another heavy pull from his beer. "Then the ore ran out. Shinra packed up and left. After that, there was nothin'. The schoolhouse closed down and the teacher went back to the City."

Elena composed her thoughts carefully.

"Sometimes, that just happens. Shinra might seem to have infinite resources, but the truth is, we're on a budget too. We can't afford to keep these facilities open if they don't turn a profit; in the end, everyone would go bankrupt. Us too."

"Oh, I know that, little lady. I'm not asking for your help, or your pity. I'm just asking you Shinra folk to remember."

"How did you know I was with the Shinra?"

"Har! Wearing a get-up like that; flying into town in a private helicopter? Word gets around you know. Who else could you be?" Derrick leaned across the table. "I'd be careful in Borrego if I was you, though. For some people in this town, a grudge is 'bout the only thing they got left."

The two talked for the next couple hours. Derrick occasionally asked her about what life was like in the City, and regaled her with tales of Borrego in its heyday. They went through a couple more rounds of beers, with Derrick generously paying and waving away all Elena's protestations about her empty wallet. If anything, the Bucket of Blood's patrons got even more unsavory as the night began to draw on. If the saloon had been mostly card cheats and thugs when Elena arrived, now it was getting downright sinister. Right before she was about to get up and take her leave, a couple leering toughs strode confidently up to their table.

"Hey there, little lady," slurred one. "Want to take a ride on my motorcycle?"

"No, thank you," Elena replied demurely.

"No, we insist," answered the other.

"Carlton!" Derrick snapped. "Thank Gaia your Mama passed on before she could see you be actin' this way!"

"Hey fuck off, old man," the one called Carlton shouted, pushing Derrick and shoving the half-crippled man to the ground.

Elena quickly stood and faced off against the two thugs. All around the bar, she could hear the sound of chairs being pushed away from tables as the other patrons started spoiling for a fight. Belatedly, she realized that bar brawls at the saloon probably constituted the vast majority of the town's prospects for entertainment. She squared off and raised her hand.

"I'm Elena, of the Turks, and if you so much as lay a hand on me I swear to Gaia that-"

She never got a chance to finish her sentence. Carlton punched her in the ribs, hard, and despite her martial arts training she was too shocked at the audacity of the man to block his blow. She doubled over, wheezing, and someone on the other side of the room let out a shout and the brawl was on.

The next few minutes were a hopeless mêlée of thrown punches and busted-up furniture. Elena threw punches wildly and dodged flying glassware to whatever extent possible. The barkeep eagerly waded into the fray, recklessly swinging her blackjack and connecting with everyone and everything. Carlton snuck up behind her, and pinned her face down to the billiard table.

"I'm gonna have fun with you," he hissed in her ear, filling her lungs with his boozy breath.

She tried to concentrate on a fire spell, but it kept sputtering out before she could get it to ignite. He was _touching_ her, teasing her, threatening her in a way she'd never been assaulted before. She threw a kick behind her and managed to tag him in the frank'n'beans, but he only grunted and held her arms tighter.

There was a loud, sudden crash.

"Get your hands off that lovely lady."

Elena inwardly groaned when she heard the voice of Reno. She'd never live it down if _he_ rescued her.

The brawl slowly sputtered to a halt. One Turk and a woman at that and the thuggish drunks of the Bucket of Blood felt confident. But three Turks – well, that was entirely too much for their cowardice to bear. Carlton released her arms and stepped back, allowing her past. The bar slowly cleared out while the three Turks glowered at their backs.

"You Shinra ain't welcome here, and you'd best remember that!" Carlton spat on the wooden floor and was the last to walk out the door.

"Sorry for all the trouble, ma'am," Reno said, ostentatiously kissing the bartender's hand and eliciting a giggle from the ogre of a woman.

"No trouble, they're like this 'most every night. But I'd appreciate it if y'all steered clear of my establishment for as long as you're in town. It'd be bad for business." The bartender stared longingly at Reno.

"Aye. Well, Elena, shall we?"

Elena glowered all the way back to the hotel room.

[Author:] Please go check out the first chapter of my book! It's linked through my profile page please please please read it and review!


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